Thursday, September 28, 2006

I was looking through my Flickr photo album and realized that I have a few cupcakes and muffins that I made in the past few months but never posted the pictures. So here’s a quick compilation.

Black bottom cupcakes

My first taste of a black bottom cupcake was over 20 years ago from the Just Desserts bakery in the Marina district. It’s a cocoa based chocolate cupcake with a chocolate chip cheesecake like center. You can’t tell from the photograph, but I baked these in miniature muffin tins so they’re only about 1-inch in diameter. They were a huge hit at my 2-year-old niece’s birthday party. (I didn't include the recipe for black bottom cupcakes here. The recipes on the internet are all pretty similar to mine.)

"Boston cream pie" cupcake*

This is my most recent cupcake experiment, the "Boston cream pie" cupcake. Boston cream pie is not really a pie but a cake - 2 layers of cake filled with a vanilla custard or pudding and then topped with a chocolate glaze. I took the idea of those components and turned them into a cupcake. I used a traditional all-American yellow butter layer cake recipe and made cupcakes instead of layer cakes. I filled the cupcakes with a vanilla bean pastry cream and then topped them with a chocolate frosting. My last experimental cupcake was my mojito cupcake back in May.

Bring the milk and1/4 cup sugar to a simmer in a non-reactive saucepan over medium heat.

Sift together remaining 1/4 cup sugar, the cornstarch and salt. Whisk the eggs in a large bowl. Add the sifted dry ingredients and whisk until fluffy.

Remove the simmering milk from the heat and ladle out about half a cup of the hot milk. Whisk it slowly into the egg/flour mixture. Once the milk is incorporated, pour the mixture back into the hot milk in the saucepan, whisking constantly.

Place saucepan over low heat and begin to whisk the pastry cream. In about 1 minute, it should boil and thicken. Continue whisking for about 3 minutes or until it has the consistency of pudding. To test cream for doneness, coat the back of a spoon. The cream will stay in place when you draw a line with your finger down the middle of the cream.

Strain the pastry cream through a fine-meshed strainer into a bowl. Add the butter and vanilla and stir until it is butter melted and incorporated. Can be refrigerated for up to 3 days.

How to assemble the "Boston Cream Pie" cupcakes:Using a pastry bag, insert tip into the top of your vanilla cupcake and pipe about 1 teaspoon of cooled pastry cream into the center. Alternatively, you can cut out a hole from the top of the cupcake and spoon in the pastry cream. Make sure to replace the top. Frost your filled cupcakes with your favorite chocolate frosting, ganache, or glaze. Store cupcakes in refrigerator.

~.~

Diane

And here’s a picture of my sweet little muffin of a cat, Diane. This photo was taken last Thanksgiving when she was still a "fat cat". She’s been quite ill lately and, subsequently, she's lost a lot of weight. We’re hoping she’ll get better soon.

Wow, that are all lot of delicious little treats in one(!)They all look great - I especially like the muffins - I love a good muffin…And what a lovely picture of Diane with al those flowers.My cat Romeo is, uhm, also a bit on the large size…Hope she is getting better soon(!)

The alpine strawberry (Fragaria vesca) is a cousin of the wild strawberry. It's sometimes simply referred to as alpineberry. I love to bake, cook and garden. My blog is a place to share my recipes and other tiny tidbits of my life.